Very old original Airfix kits

[Allan-1254581]

Hello everyone, I am new to this forum and I am looking for some information. I was having a chat to my neighbours brother. While chatting with him about the hobbys we had as kids he mentioned that he had bought allot of Airfix boat kits during the mid 50's and onwards, these are in his loft in the original boxes unopened and not assembled. If I were to get a list of what he has would anyone know what they would be worth. I am not going to gain anything out of potential sale of these kits but as he is not on the internet he is unable to get information on his kits. He did mention that he had two kits one was a liner with two tugs all original and I think the other was a battleship but I'm not to sure. Any help would be appreciated

[Sailorman]

I suspect from your post that there are kits by other manufacturers and not just Airfix. You can get an idea of prices by seeing what the kits go for in auction sites. If they are kits from the 50's you might find he has some gems there.

[Russ1707821018]

With few exceptions, like the Airfix Southern Cross liner kit, the Airfix ship kits are not particularly rare having had multiple reissues over the years. The Southern Cross is valuable because it was a limited run promotional item for the company that owned the real ship. A kit in mint condition would probably sell for a few hundred pounds.

The Airfix 1/600 SS France kit is maybe the next most valuable at £100-£200 on eBay because the tooling is lost and the kit cannot be produced again. Next would be the 1/600 MV Free Enterprise II. The original release of this kit was quite limited and it was never re-released. We also know the moulds are missing. Typical eBay pricing on that is in the area of £100.

Depending on condition and box type I’d expect the other 1/600 ship kits to sell in the £10-£50 range and the large sailing ships in the £25-£75 range. You can find people listing them for a lot more, but won’t see many sold items outside those ranges.

I'm less familiar with the Revell, Renwall, Lindberg, Hawk, and Aurora ship ranges but there are some that can sell for £100+.

The best thing to do is look at SOLD items on eBay, not listings, if you want to get an idea of current value and don’t be surprised if an item sells for much less than expected. Less frequently, things will sell for well-over expectations if you get two motivated bidders.

The bottom line is his collection is probably not worth life-changing money.

[ian_rutland]

The Liner and two tugs, and a Battleship, actually sound like the Tri-ang Minic 1/1200 scale harbour sets that were made in Hong Kong. These have been out of production since the 70's, but are not really rare, many available from Ebay and other sellers. They were quite nice and were based on the original series from 1958 to 62. The battleship would be HMS Vanguard, which often suffers from a moulding defect that ends up causing the model to break into 4 parts. It comes with a Carrier, usually HMS Bulwark, Hermes, or Centaur, plus harbour parts. The liner would be RMS Queen Elizabeth. The HK Kits ( Polystyrene boxes ) are not too valuable, but the original Cardboard boxed ones get a fair price. Note: All HK models had red plastic bases with little rollers.